What The Western Reader Wants Us To Be
In the photo, you see a Georgian recreational place called Tskaltubo. This place was very popular during the Soviet times. Stalin’s favorite place, to be clear. Most of this place is in ruins now. The only visitor to the buildings is moss. Last year, if I am not mistaken, Jim Carrey bought the NFT photo of one of the buildings in Tskaltubo. He paid more money than is needed to rebuild the whole building.
One of the Georgian writers, Archil Kikodze, wrote a novel last year. The main character is a guide for tourists. The first thing that the guide is showing to foreigners is a building, a house full of tricks and tasks. The visitors must solve these tasks like the detectives and, step by step, finish the game. But the thing is that the plot of this game is connected to Soviet times. Moreover, while playing one of the participants accidentally brokes the pipe, and water floods the floor.
Are we like a post-soviet museum or what?
We are expected to write about war, soviet repressions, mountains, mountainers in the cities, and mountainers in the mountains. As longer the world expects this from us, as long we will not be able to move on.
Giorgi Tchkadua
Giorgi is the graduate of the Faculty of Governance and Social Sciences at the Free University of Tbilisi. The fields of his interest lay in Literature and Philosophy and his first research project was the Trauma of Holocaust, Narration and Self-reconstruction Practices. The next work of Giorgi was the study on a documentary novel “If This is a Man”’ by Primo Levi. While working on it, he discovered that there were no sufficient texts and research about the recent past and historical traumas in Georgia. Therefore, Giorgi prepared his bachelor’s thesis, entitled Georgian Traumas in the First Part of Twentieth Century and their Narration in the Literature. Simultaneously, he started writing articles for the Journal Indigo. Also, he continuously writes short stories and takes part in literary competitions. According to Giorgi, every other step was a sign that the most valuable thing for him is a story about humans and therefore, he thinks that the best combination of the Academy and his interests appeared to look up real stories, see the struggle and trouble that people came over, see battles that were won, or the frustration of defeat. Further, he entered Ilia State University to study The History of Modern Georgia and after the graduation he focused on writing and developing his own skills to create texts that will be mediums between present and past, reality and history, and people to people.
